Silicon Valley High-Tech Company Tour

The goal is to help companies respond to consumers comments about their products. For example, if someone is ticked off at Pepsi or Home Depot, they can send a comment out over Twitter -- and Pepsi or Home Depot can see it easily and respond.

This lowers the bar for getting noticed by big corporations. Ever sent a question or a gripe to a company's 'contact us' email? And then waited endlessly for reply? Exactly.

The Real Fruit of Silicon Valley

The core purpose is so consumers can easily be heard without having to be tech-savvy -- and so companies can easily find, and hopefully reply, to consumers' concerns.

If people are satisfied, businesses will know. If something is wrong, they'll know that as well. Companies are jumping into the social networking world with both hands these days, sometimes awkwardly.

Dog Eat Dog World of Silicon Valley

Much like how they provided companies with the tools to work the dot com boom, Cisco wants to be the tool provider for companies eager to stay in touch with their customers.

This is -- if it catches on -- even better news for those of us who hate the idea of spending hours on the phone waiting to talk to a customer representative, and may someday smooth over the torture that customer service has become.

Give it a try. Reach out and touch a company with a Tweet. Who knows, it just might lead to a fix.

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